Zubeidaa

Riyaz was raised by his grandmother from the age of three and knows almost nothing about his mother; as an adult he finds the people who knew her and begins to assemble her life piece by piece. The woman who emerges is Zubeidaa: someone who wanted to act, whose family would not allow it, who was married young and came back when that marriage failed. She then meets a Rajput prince and agrees to become his second wife, caught between the order of the palace, the first wife and what she wants for herself. The screenplay of Shyam Benegal’s hundred and fifty minute Indian film was written by Khalid Mohamed from the life of his own mother. Karisma Kapoor plays Zubeidaa, Rekha the prince’s first wife and Manoj Bajpayee the prince. It was completed in 2001 and won the National Film Award for best feature film in Hindi.